Fiorenzo Carpi
Le avventure di Pinocchio

It was 1972, and I was really little, little...

Yes, it was 1972, and for six consecutive Saturdays, Italian children stayed glued to the TV screen watching "Le avventure di Pinocchio" by Luigi Comencini...

"Le avventure di Pinocchio," a masterpiece and one of the peaks of TV during those years...

Among the many merits of this work, two seem to me the most relevant: giving back to the story that poor and rural setting that highlights its poignant magic, and breathing a light, melancholic breeze over its clay figurines, making them move, live, and stir in a suspended, enchanted, and almost timeless atmosphere...

Whether it's an attitude or an authorial choice, this melancholic trait contrasts with the freshness and vivacity of Collodi's pages and the vitality and naivety of which Pinocchio himself is the symbol...

It contrasts, yes, but that contrast is one of the keys to the work...life against the world or, better yet, despite the world...

Another key, of course, is the fabulous, a gentle fabulous that establishes itself gradually, almost subtly, always starting from simple elements...

What could be simpler, indeed, than a log of wood?

To support (and perhaps even double) the tenderness of this magical realism, there's the wonderful soundtrack by Fiorenzo Carpi, with its refined and popular music that mixes a twilight tone with a playful jump, naivety, and wisdom, high and low...

I believe there isn't a child, among those who heard those songs at the time, who wouldn’t feel a jolt or a pang at heart when hearing them again...

Starting from the splendid opening theme where a small organ and a middle-school recorder draw a carousel melody to offer it, a simple gift from the heart, to a harpsichord with a music box sound.

Something insignificant that, if it reminds a bit of adventure, more than anything else alludes to what we will see after: a village under the snow, a caravan of traveling actors, a stable, the bare room of a carpenter...

And it's in that room, where time is marked by a clock without hands, that everything begins, and we first hear Fiorenzo Carpi's sweet music, which with utmost simplicity first highlights the solitude and poverty of Geppetto's life and then the fervor and joy during the creation of the puppet.

And it is here that the famous and bouncing Andantino is born, just like Pinocchio is born, a tune that everyone, but really everyone knows,

We first hear it in lumps and snatches that, while Geppetto is intent on working, the little tune suddenly stops every time he notices that the puppet is moving...

Then we hear it in all its incredible beauty...Suddenly a door opens and a child, barefoot and dressed in a burlap sack, goes out into the street, stops near a fountain, and starts playing with the water...

After a while, his dad reaches him:

"Come inside, you'll catch a cold...come on...don't make me angry..."

The child then splashes him with water and runs away...

He runs, runs, and a donkey (a very dark omen) crosses his path, forcing him, for a moment, to stop...

He runs, runs, the dad always behind...A flock of sheep comes towards them, the child suddenly finds himself in the middle and doesn't know how to move, but eventually, he finds a gap...

And the famous Andantino starts accompanying the run and the discovery of the world...

There, in my opinion, that moment is extremely significant...

That moment is being there and means something like "e mo son cazzi," but also a million possibilities...

Or perhaps a million illusions, that sweet, lovable, irresistible refraction of that mad harpsichord is truly a door opening...

And it is fresh and noisy music like Pinocchio's (yes, that child is Pinocchio) little feet pattering in the first stream he encounters during that first escape.

We will hear that little music often during the five hours of the work, sometimes with a strange robotic effect as when Pinocchio, turned back into a puppet, runs towards the fairy's house...Sometimes softened by that middle-school recorder we mentioned...

And we will often hear Geppetto's melancholic theme, the music box effect at each appearance of the fairy, and a whirlwind half-tango, half-opera buffa for the escapades of the cat and the fox...

And there will be sinister sounds (perhaps the only ones in the entire soundtrack) when Candlewick and Pinocchio are turned into donkeys...

All in the name of touching simplicity...

Fiorenzo Carpi, the composer of the music for almost all the plays by Strehler and Dario Fo, as well as the famous "canzoni della mala," was a great, truly great musician.

He was a reserved man who loved to paint and watch the stars.

His daughter recounts that, during the composition of the music for Pinocchio, her father hummed continuously, something she had never heard him do before...

And this little detail is worth more to me than a thousand words...